Malch I like the idea of an SSD drive, but I'm not sure about installation. Does it just slide into the slot where the disc drive in and replace the hard drive? Are there any problems with installing it other than transferring the software?

A bit more involved...

Typically, one adds an SSD to a system -- affordable SSD's have relatively low storage capacity relative to HDDs. Hence, folks generally want to keep their existing HDD. With laptops, that's generally a bit tricky.

Some laptops have two drive bays. In other cases (like mine) there's one drive bay and one mSATA slot that will take a mSATA SSD. Some folks even end up replacing a DVD/CD drive with another disk (in some type of caddy).

Once the hardware is installed, you'll want to put the operating system, applications, and in the case of Lightroom, the LR Catalog, on the SSD. Some folks do this by imaging the original HDD and restoring onto a SSD. Others start over with a clean Windows install.

My Y480 came with a i7-3630 CPU, 8GB RAM and a 1TB 5400rpm HDD. Frankly, the performance was a bit disappointing. That changed when I added a 256GB mSATA SSD and reinstalled. Now the thing absolutely flies. I still use my desktop for most photo editing even though it's a little slower, because it has the advantage of a 24 inch IPS panel.

Do you have an eSATA port on your notebook? If so you can buy a SSD and external enclosure for about $150 and keep LR4, your catalogue and your RAW cache on it. That should help speed things up